Governor in the Hollow Way and shoots him through the heart.
“Whilst Austria’s Tyrant sinks forlorn,
The Parent’s curse, the Infant’s scorn,
The Hate of Human-kind;
Blest with the meed, which Virtue gives,
Lo! Tell’s pure name to ages lives,
In every nobler heart enshrin’d.”
Of course, critics have arisen, who attempt the destruction of this
story. Some would not account themselves progressive if they did not try
to annihilate the
[Illustration: THE URI-ROTHSTOCK SEEN FROM BRUNNEN]
past, or turn it upside down, or inside out. Bacon was Shakespeare;
Homer was a crowd of at least twenty scribes; a Welshman, and not
Columbus, discovered America; and Bonivard, the Prisoner of Chillon, was
an out-and-out scamp. So would some deal with Tell. They would treat him
as the lake on Mount Pilatus was treated--they would throw stones at
him, scoff at his simple, heroic virtue, and drain him even of his
existence. Listen to what Baedeker, in his guide to Switzerland, has to
say of “the romantic but unfounded tradition of William Tell”:
“The legend of the national hero of Switzerland, as well as the
story of the expulsion of the Austrian bailiffs in 1308, is
destitute of historical foundation. No trace of such a person is to
be found in the work of John of Winterthur (Vitoduranus, 1349), or
that of Conrad Justinger of Bern (1420), the earliest Swiss
historians. Mention is made of him for the first time in the Sarner
Chronik of 1470, and the myth was subsequently embellished by
Ægidius Tschudi of Glarus (d. 1542), and still more by Johann von
Müller (d. 1809), while Schiller’s famous play has finally secured
to the hero a world-wide celebrity. Similar traditions are met with
among various northern nations, such as the Danes and Icelanders.”
Does not such reading as this appear to damage the scenery of Uri’s Bay?
It seems at least but poor service to render to the tourist--this
killing of half of the district’s wild romance. Those who cling to the
stout, red little volume as to a dear and trusted friend, must
nevertheless feel something like a pang of regret as they climb up
through the beech wood to the green slope and the old chalet of the
Rütli and drink water from the three famous springs; nor can they be
unconscious of a certain feeling of loss as they walk by the bushes of
mountain honeysuckle along the path to the little chapel on the
Tellsplatte and gaze through the ironwork screen at the fine mural
pictures of this outrageous but glorious myth. Tradition is a hard thing
to kick against.
Sentiment, however, is of no use for confounding the critics. But let
the Baedeker-beridden tourist take heart; there is evidence, after all,
not only that Tell may have lived, but that he may have done something
to earn his reputation. William Peter, in the Appendix to his English
translation of Schiller’s play, voices this evidence. Among other points
in favour of the substantial veracity of tradition, he gives two facts
of special hopefulness:--
“The many old German Songs and Romances in which he (Tell) is
celebrated, and which are so remarkable for their ancient dialect
and simplicity as to leave little doubt either of their own
authenticity or of the truth of the deeds which they commemorate”;
and
“The creation of three Chapels (one of them--viz. at the Tell’s
plat--in 1388, only 24 years after Tell’s death, and when there
were 114 persons present in the Landsgemeinde of Uri who had
personally known him)”.
He further states that
“The last of Tell’s posterity--a female named Verena--died in
1720. The male branch had become extinct in 1684, by the Death of
John Martin Tell of Attinghausen. Tell (the famous Tell) resided
at, and was Mayor of Bürglen, which is not half an hour’s walk from
the village of Attinghausen. He lived for many years after the
events celebrated in Schiller’s Play, performed his part at the
battles of Morgarten and Laupen in 1315 and 1339, and perished, in
1354, in his generous attempt to rescue a child from the
overflowing waters of the Schächen (the mountain torrent which
flows through Bürglen and into the Reuss at Attinghausen).”
Moreover, there is the proved importance of tradition, as such.
Something can and must be said for it. That certain episodes, accepted
as fact, do not appear in written contemporary history, is not in itself
safe proof of the falsity of those episodes. Just because no mention is
made of Tell in the White Book of Sarnen, this is small reason for
denouncing the hero as a mere replica of Toko, principal actor in an old
Danish legend. The truthfulness of traditions handed down from
generation to generation by word of mouth has frequently startled those
who have set out to refute them. The tradition of the Flood, current
among many widely separated and obscure peoples, has been proved by
geology to be quite worthy of credence. A rolling stone may gather much
moss; but the essential thing, the stone, is beneath the richly-tinted
covering.
So, let critic and historian do their worst to damage William Tell; he
will escape them as surely as he escaped Gessler. His name and deeds,
be they fact or be they fiction, are so much part and parcel of the
scenery, that nothing save a devastating convulsion of Nature can
possibly bring them to naught. Landmarks must be obliterated, the whole
landscape must be radically changed, if Tell is to sink into oblivion.
As things are, go where you will around the Lake, he and his age are
bound to assert themselves. Even the elements will combine to bring him
to your mind. Walk from Brunnen along the magnificent Axenstrasse hewn
by the Government from the rock-cliffs of the Axenberg as a strategic
route; stroll on amid the red-barked pines, the rocks aglow with tufts
of rosy _Erinus alpinus_, or with the rosy springtime heather, or the
blood-red summer cranesbill, while Orange Tip, or White Admiral and
Purple Emperor butterflies flit from flower to flower or from sun-patch
to sun-patch along the road; stroll on to the wayside clearing where
stands a stone memorial to the artist, Henry Telbin, who fell from this
spot whilst sketching in 1860; sit here amongst the bright wild
sunflowers[2] and gaze down the sheer rocks to the sparkling blue-green
waters partly flooded in golden light, and take note of how calm and
peaceful all is as the gay-awninged row-boats and the curiously ungainly
steam cargo-barges steal about the surface. Now mark that
[Illustration: THE AXENBERG FROM BRUNNEN--AN AUTUMN EVENING]
faint, distant rumbling, and look up towards the snows of the
Uri-Rothstock. A storm is brewing beyond Göeschenen and among the
Bernese Alps. You say that it is nothing; that it is a very long way
off? Wait awhile! Mark that filmy wisp of cloud, sprung suddenly from
nowhere, wreathing itself slowly about the Teufelsmünster’s cliff; mark,
too, how the blue sky has changed to grey behind the snows, and how the
snows themselves have turned a sullen white. “Cat’s-paws” are playing
erratically upon the water; the mountains are growing harder in colour;
heavy vapours are filling the gorges, and the pines about you are
whispering mysteriously among themselves. Do you notice how all the
row-boats are hastening towards Brunnen, and how the gulls are
screaming? Black clouds are rolling up over the Seelisberg hotels; white
horses are visible upon the Lake, and the Uri-Rothstock now looks quite
forbidding. Do you hear that dull roaring? No, it is not thunder; it is
the wind as it approaches. The pines above you are warning you. The
snows have disappeared in darkness; Isleton is blotted out, and the
Rütli can scarcely be seen for drifting cloud-bursts. The scene is now a
chaos of cold indigo steeped in greyness. The wind is rushing on you
with a whistling howl, and hurling hail at you. Forked lightning,
piercing the murk, stabs at the seething waters, and the thunder rattles
and booms and rolls interminably. Where all but a brief while ago was
crystal-bright and tranquil, at present is dull-grey pandemonium.
And as the electric tongues flash zigzag across the gloom, you fancy
that you catch sight of a storm-tossed barque of ancient form, and that
you hear above the screeching wind the scream of fear-struck Gessler,
imploring Tell to take the helm. For it was some such storm as this to
which Tell owed his freedom and his life. Critics point to the
convenient suddenness of the two storms which find a place in Schiller’s
play; they call them specimens of poetic licence. But this is not
necessarily the case. From the very configuration of the Bay of Uri it
is a deadly storm-trap. Ah, it can smile and look winsome enough when it
pleases--and this, to our great good, is more than often; but it is
subject to surprisingly sudden fits of rage, when it is as fearsome as,
and perhaps more treacherous than, many a hurricane-ridden ocean.
The storm has passed as quickly as it came, and butterflies and flowers
are in their element once more. If possible, the Bay is the lovelier for
its rude half-hour of stress. It can be grand in tempest and foul
weather; but that which fits it best is the rule and realm of sunshine.
Thus, in hard-won peace and grimly conceived beauty, may we
appropriately take leave of the Lake of the Forest Cantons.
There is a movement afoot to erect in these parts a costly and elaborate
national monument in commemoration of the founding of the republic; a
monument that shall eclipse all existing monuments having a like
purpose. Has, then, the Bay of Uri been forgotten, or are there hopes
that this new monument will represent a nation’s pride and faith with
greater distinction, beauty, and inspiration than does Nature’s own most
noble, venerated effort? Saturated as are these precincts with the very
spirit of primitive Swiss history; crowded as they are already with
mementoes of that heroic past, can any new, particular memorial, however
expensive and imposing, add one whit to national consciousness, one whit
of strength and fervour to the inherited love of independence? If, as
some think, there is a threatening tendency towards future absorption by
a neighbouring power, will any fresh monument to liberty, no matter how
imposing and elaborate, stir depths of protective patriotism which are
not already touched by the scenery of Uri’s Bay and the grand old story
of William Tell? I think not. The story is one of Switzerland’s
strongest bulwarks; it is among those things which, though they may have
never happened, are indestructible. I venture to believe that the spirit
of the landscape, and of all for which the landscape stands, is
engrained in the race, and that, as long as Uri’s Bay and its historic
landmarks exist, Schiller’s lines will express the simple, forceful, and
abiding verity--
“True as yon Alp to its own native Flowers,
True as the Torrent to its Rocky-Bed,
Or Clouds and Winds to their appointed Track
The Switzer cleaves to his accustom’d Freedom”.
[Illustration]
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
_At the Villafield Press, Glasgow, Scotland_
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Canon Rawnsley’s little _brochure_, _The Revival of the Decorative
Arts in Lucerne_, is a useful companion to have with one when strolling
about the town and looking at the frescoed houses.
[2] _Buphthalmum salicifolium_, an herbaceous plant abundant around
this Lake.